If you can have a career as a footballer for 13 years then you're really lucky, but there will probably be plenty of supporters up and down the country saying that I wasn't a top player, to put it kindly. That's for sure.
— Graham Potter
It's hard to get opportunities anywhere. There are a lot of coaches out there and a lot of talented coaches too. It's not easy. Quite often there's no perfect situation that emerges.
Ultimately, good players need to play and they don't always at a young age in England.
We want to help the players be more comfortable in their own skin, a bit braver, a bit more aware and more understanding of each other.
From a football perspective, putting young footballers into art, or singing - you're doing something that's not so familiar. It has helped us build a team and build a spirit.
I remember playing against the great Manchester United teams when I was a player.
When it is 1-0 and you have been dominant and you have restricted the home team to pretty much nothing, if you do not score the second goal then that is football. Any action can happen in the game.
Like everybody I needed to learn to be a coach, I needed to practise that and make mistakes in a decent environment where I could develop myself and not fear I was going to lose my job.
The profile is to find if someone can perform in the Championship and help you win, and also play in the Premier League because that has to be the goal.
But any squad needs players who are hungry to do well, with their careers ahead of them. That's important for the dynamic of the group, but it also needs a balance of guys who have seen it, done it and have that quality of leadership. It is all about the quality of the player.
What you've never had, you never miss.
You always need a bit of fortune in life.
Football is quite easy when you're doing well and winning games. It's when things aren't so good and they get tough, that's when the character and attitude stand up.
At Ostersunds, we had half the players who were part-time and working and the other half were full-time.
But concepts around how a team functions, the importance of the relationship between football and the person, how you develop both, are always valid.
I played football because I loved the game - but I didn't enjoy the focus on not making mistakes and the culture being essentially one of blame and a little fear.
I was at Leeds Carnegie, the ninth tier. And I was coaching students. There would have been hundreds of managers with more experience. So I had to go to the fourth tier of Swedish football, pretty much in the Arctic circle.
I was obviously never good enough to play at a top level, or even anywhere close to that, if I'm being honest. That's the reality.
We thought of cultural activities as a way of taking players out of their comfort zone and building team spirit, helping them be braver, and a bit more comfortable in the uncomfortable situations.When you involve the community in that they get interested.
Sometimes it helps to see the world through someone else's eyes.
I can't sing, I can't dance, I can't do much else to be honest.
I got a job as a football development manager which meant I could coach the students and work with the sports sciences department, all the people in university sector.
Any coach in my era will reference or look at Guardiola's teams. If you look at the style of play, he has had a huge influence on football. And he has innovated it again.
I was fairly rubbish as a player.
My mum had always pressed on me to continue my education, and it was just the volatility of sport in terms of not being able to control the result.
If you identify those guys - something we have done in the past - who are not as valued in the current market for whatever reason and you look to get them to play at a higher level than where they have come from. That's how you develop the team.
I want to take people out of their comfort zones and teach them to rely on their team-mates.
Without those experiences in higher education I wouldn't have been able to do this job. It taught me a more holistic approach and prepared me for the experience of working abroad, where your cultural beliefs are challenged and, sometimes, turned on their head.
I improved enormously, on and off the pitch, over that year at Swansea.
My unglittering football career came to a halt at the age at 30, and I had to embark on a coaching career: 14 years of hard work and sacrifice, learning and mistakes.
Players are fundamentally the same - regardless of what they earn. They want to improve and want to be part of something.
You have to respect and understand the environment. So I don't think it's a case of taking anything from Ostersund and transferring it to somewhere else.
It was a huge move for me to leave Sweden, because I was really happy there. It was a club we thought we could carry on developing and try to win the league with. And my family were really settled.
Sometimes there is a disconnect between footballers and supporters, because there are highly-paid people here and supporters over there, and nothing in between.
My situation, and my opportunity, was the fourth tier in Swedish football and a place that nobody really wanted to go to. Of course it's turned out well for me.
I don't think it's fair to say the standard of English coaching is bad. It's more about pathway: how you can get a break and then progress from there. Even at the lowest levels there is impatience now, so you need a bit of luck in terms of the owner or chairman that you work with.
Ostersund has marketed itself as a winter city. But that's changing now, with the success of the football team.
You make mistakes at the results end of football and you can be out on your ear pretty quickly.
My playing career that was a bit up but mostly down. I played in the Premier League at Southampton but most of my career was in the lower divisions.
I was only picking up short-term contracts in the lower leagues. I thought that rather than the game kick me out, I'd be proactive about it.
I had five years in the university sector which was a time where I could make my mistakes, develop with the students and players there. I also worked with the people at the university to put some concept and theory on my own experiences.
The competition that is the Premier League is the biggest challenge in itself. It's my job to get the players to believe that they can go in to every match and win.
It is about building the best team you can, not just one to play in the Championship. You look short-term because you need to be competitive, that's the nature of the business. But it's exciting to have players whose potential is exciting.
Educating players and being part of the community are very important.
We try and play football in a positive way. Any team has to be defensively organised, but you have to look at the attributes of the players and play to their strengths.
But the concept that it's important to understand the individual and the person, as well as the footballer, is a helpful concept, regardless of the competition.
The pressure of the Premier League is huge but so is moving your family across the world to a club where they had sacked the manager every year for the last five.
Whenever you start a new job, it's always a bit daunting, the unknown.
I was used to football supporters hammering me and I thought my name was Graham Potter-Boo at one point.
I'd read a classics book on the bus when I was at York.
